South America (Location Key)

Argentina and Nicarauga have their own entries in this index, as do four locations in the Caribbean (Cuba, Haiti, Martinique and the West Indies). The continent of "South America" is referred to in 4 texts. The cigarettes that Harry Mitchell offers Horace Benbow in Flags in the Dust are "imported from South America" (193). In Absalom! it is speculated that Henry Sutpen may have "fled" to the continent after killing Charles Bon (147). But most of the references to "South America" in the fictions are in connection with the tourism of the widowed "Mrs. Harris," as Melisandre Backus is called before she marries Gavin Stevens. When World War II makes it impossible for her to keep traveling around Europe, "it had to be South America," according to Charles Mallison in The Mansion. (282). That trip is mentioned in both the novel and the earlier "Knight's Gambit," but never described; the only place we know she visits is Argentina, where she meets "the Argentine steeple-chasing cavalry officer" named Sebastian Gualdres, who appears in both texts.